


all the secrets of the world

by Ark



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Historical, Cave Analogies, Gods and Monsters, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Sex, Slash, warrior!Derek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:07:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ancient Greece AU. Stiles and Derek are demigods. Stiles is a monster-slaying son of Hermes. Derek is something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [this gorgeous picture](http://et-in-arkadia.tumblr.com/post/31570087832/balphesian-so-there-are-a-lot-of-greek-mythical) by [Balphesian](http://balphesian.tumblr.com), which was a massive inspiration, and without which this story would not exist. Thanks also to [Saucery](http://www.archiveofourown.com/users/saucery/) for putting out the call to write. Thanks to [pleasebekidding](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding) for being. Many thanks to the lovely [triedunture](http://archiveofourown.org/users/triedunture) for coming with me to the Metropolitan museum, and for knowing what Lydia should be.
> 
> Title from Neil Young, _Cortez the Killer_ : “In his halls he often wondered / With the secrets of the worlds” and from Lemony Snicket: "All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk." 
> 
> I've loved Greek mythology since I was a kid but this is not intended to be historically accurate. Think more _Xena: Warrior Princess_ than Herodotus. With apologies to my former classics professors.

Long has Stiles son of Hermes tracked the beast out of Hades. Twice they had met, and twice fought, and the creature turned cowardly tail and fled. Masterless, it was more dangerous; unpredictable, feral. It could not live, but it would not die. 

It had run from their last spar gravely wounded. Thick ichor dripped and seeped from the gashes he made. Still it did not fall, and spouted a poison that left him locked up like a corpse while it escaped. When he had his wits and limbs returned, he followed.

Slower now, though, it moves slower, and when Stiles puts his head down he can trace its pain, its anger, but the stench of fear is thickest. The end, he knows, is not so far now.

The monster has taken to dense hills, hiding where the trees knot close, drawing out its certain death. He is an expert tracker, a son of the Messenger God, God of wit, luck, thieves and cunning, and no trickery escapes his eye. Double-backed paths are clearly marked, traps laid in the thicket reveal themselves to him like old friends. Stiles enters the deep wood without hesitation, though many eyes blink watching from the trees.

Weakened as it is, the creature is attracting other predators now. He knows that his are not the only steps to dog it but he must be the one to deliver the killing blow. 

_This quest will be the making of you,_ the Oracle at Delphi had said, convulsing with prophecy, milky eyes opaque, the red of her hair wild as a living thing. _If you do not complete it you are a fool, and ruined._

So they meet again at the waning moon. The forest has been still and cold but not unkind. Invisible paths and twisted trees give up their secrets to him. 

Stiles has the element of surprise, of chosen approach, but the monster has been lying in wait, has dug itself in to a cave of pitchy darkness. There is no echo when his foot falls; the cave curves down into black. 

He brings no torch, only tools. The herbs to cast that will subdue it; the words that will bind its foul magics; the sword from his father forged by the blacksmith-God Hephaestus at Lemnos, with a wrought edge that could rend its scaly flesh. 

This time the battle is quick. His opponent screams in agony as Stiles spins to meet its attack, blade biting deep. He was not made to be a warrior but he has trained for this, has the blood of Olympians and men in his veins. He is clever and his stroke is quick and sure. At last they have come to the end of it, and this will be the making of him, as the Oracle promised.

_“No--!”_

The shout is so unexpected, so harshly humane in the space between the combatants' hissing breath, that it crashes like a storm-wave. Stiles staggers under the weight of the distraction and the sudden lash of a tail across his neck. 

Shocked – hit – raked through by the bitter claws that strike out, he staggers again, then falls, and his enemy looks at him with yellow eyes that show his death reflected. 

Oracles do not lie but they seldom speak in truths. Perhaps she had meant this would be the making of his name, cut down a failure, a God's get who faltered. Stiles, Hermes's son, will go to his uncle Hades's domain of shades without even proper rites, without coins for Chiron's boat or a proper pyre for his bones. 

He does not close his eyes as the monster leans in to take out his throat, he would not close them if he could. 

So he is watching as it is hit and jerked sideways, he sees the blur and how the air shifts and changes with the passage of motion, with the impact of something huge. The spitting face of his ruin goes down with an ear-piercing shriek. 

Stiles breathes. 

Scrabble of claws on the stone of the cave, and then he can hear it slithering away, screeching in pain as it reverses directions towards the light, the sheltering wood outside. From his death to his life in a moment's blink of an eye, but Stiles did not blink. He saw it happen, saw some other body cast his foe into the ground with brute strength alone.

Every muscle is seized and locked up with venom but he can feel the deep gash across his belly well enough, the steady pump and flow of blood gathering into a red pool. 

Before his eyes close his line of sight is filled by a long shadow, and where the monster had been now stands a man, tall and broad across the chest and darkly fair. Before Stiles closes his eyes he does not know if the vision is of the living or the dead, but he thinks it not a poor sight to be one's last.

 

* * *

 

He swims in fire and blood and fever. The poisoned claws had caught him cruelly, and left the taint of their infection. 

Naked to the waist, sweating, he tosses through nights and days, drinks the stews and cures and waters brought to him. It is hard where he lies, rocky ground separated by a thin woven blanket with something that smells strongly of animal hide for a pillow. 

His eyes feel sealed shut; his body protests every turn and kick, and he groans, mumbles in a low voice about unaccountable events. The dreams are fraught, surely sent by some angry God to punish him. Whenever he calls out for his mother, a cool cloth covers his burning brow, smelling fresh and forest-damp, and he shifts into other dreams.

Mortals would have passed into the underworld from the same woulds, but Stiles is not mortal. Neither is he immortal. The sickness wrings him out but diminishes at last, so that there comes a day when he can put his hand up and feel that the flesh over his stomach has re-knit. Tender and tight to the touch, he is nonetheless whole, and well-wrapped bandages with a spread of poultice have promoted healing. He can smell the pungent scent of ground-up herbs like those prepared by the priests of Apollo's temple garden. 

But when he opens his heavy lids and rubs sleep-sand from his eyes, he is being tended in no temple. He is still in the cave where he fell, only illuminated now with light from torches lashed high on the sloping walls.

Around him the dank scene of battle has been transformed into a neat camp with military efficiency. Stiles's blanket is placed close to the tiny fire, its gray smoke curling up to the jagged mouth of the cave overhead. 

Cross-legged across the fire sits the man Stiles saw before he closed his eyes to illness. He sits working a cloth steadily over much-gleaming leather armor, the big muscles of his arms shifting under golden skin. Stripped of battleguards he wears only undergarments, a thin tunic that strains massive shoulders. 

He is composed in the style of a Spartan warrior, the long spear they favor propped nearby, his blue-black hair cropped close. He has not been so fastidious with his cheek, which shows a rough dark stubble in contrast to the fine lines of his jaw. 

Stiles swallows, his throat thick, his voice grown unused to his command, but he makes a sound and has enough mobility to paw at the bandage binding his belly, which has begun to itch badly. The man looks up at once and then is dropping down beside him, bits of leather and breastplate falling as he moves without regard to the contents of his lap. 

He moves like a whirlwind, like the force Stiles remembers slamming against the monster bare-handed, and despite the beauty of his form and the concern in eyes the color of Aegis's sea, Stiles shrinks away, puts up a shaking, distancing hand between them.

Just as no man without the blood or aid of Gods could have survived Stiles's wounds, no man without the blood of the Gods – or perhaps a God or Goddess's favor – could have met the monster with strength enough to injure and send it fleeing his challenge. 

The proud body of a hardened soldier suggests that he is Ares's offspring, a son of the war-god, terrible and beautiful; but he has mended Stiles with the skill of brilliant Apollo, and shines like one who is sun-touched.

Or if he is not the Gods' progeny as Stiles is sprung, it is easy to see how he might be a God or nymph's beloved, given extra gifts to enhance his unearthly grace. Some immortals sought eternal youth or superior strength in battle for their favorites; legends told of it readily enough. But whether the man above him is like unto him or a chosen hero he does not know. As far as he knows he has met neither before. His life has been filled with sequestered learning, and then with monsters, and he sees few others to engage these lonely days. 

But he always had a loose tongue, his teachers had long taken him to task for it. Unsuccessfully. “What – who are you?” Stiles demands with a croak. He tries to sit up, only to be waylaid by big hands spanning his upper arms. He _does_ know is that the man interrupted Stiles's fight, endangering his life, at the very moment that was meant to be his crowning victory. How will he even begin to track the beast now that it has untold days on him? “Why did you interfere?”

Perhaps he sounds ungrateful after his interloper has given so much time over to his care, but the wounds would not have been made save for him. Grimacing, Stiles feels the taut burn of his abdomen and the ache of unused muscles, and he stretches like a cat and gives a cat's glare. He waits for indignation to match his own but does not receive it. The soldier just puts up one thick dark eyebrow, and the sides of his mouth twitch.

“It is good to have you returned,” he says. “You have been on quite a journey, I think.” He shifts his attention to a line of supplies arrayed near the cavewall beside them. Stiles is still scratching absently at the cloth over his belly, and he reaches out to gently still his hand. “Hold a moment. This wants for changing.”

Calmly skirting Stiles's glare, he sets about removing the bandage, smoothing on fresh poultice from a small stone mortar, then laying down strips of cloth for a new covering. The pad of his fingertip coated with paste glides firmly across Stiles's skin, checking for irregularities. He speaks while he works. 

“I am called Derek of Sparta,” says the man. “I am much aggrieved at the injuries you took. That was not my intention.” The re-bandaging task is shortly executed, as though he's done it dozens of times before; he sits back on his heels. Even crouched low he towers over Stiles. 

“I came upon you because I was seeking you,” he says, matter-of-fact. He wipes his hands clean on a clean rag, then flicks his right wrist and presses the back of it against Stiles's forehead, in a move as equally well-practiced as the others he has performed. “I tried to stop you because the creature you meant to kill was the innocent party, and its death would have benefited no one. Good, your fever feels fully broken. It has been some days.”

Stiles works his jaw throughout the recitation, blinking. Derek of Sparta takes his wrist away and starts methodically returning supplies to their proper places along the wall, as though that explained it. 

It is strange to look at him. Stiles has a gift of sight few mortals have, can see beneath the surfaces of places and people; and the more he gets used to the dim light of the cave the more he can see that Derek is something other than what meets the eye, that Derek shimmers at the edges, that Derek's musclebound length and breadth almost cannot contain him. Stiles has a good deal to say but he starts at the beginning. “You were looking for me? You know who I am?”

“Our islands are not so distant,” says Derek, “and all our people favor heroes. Word has traveled far of the little scholar who slays monsters.” He pauses, eying Stiles speculatively, then a touch apologetically. He spreads his hands. “It is said that you are shorter.”

Stiles should be offended but he finds himself laughing instead, curving a hand to his side when laughing hurts. He is a legend at long last, his name echoes across the lands, songs are being sung about a tiny man who fights giant heinous things. The making of him indeed. Have it all, then. “What more do they say?”

Derek had slanted him a surprised look when he laughed, but returns the humor now with a quirk of his lips. Spartans seldom smiled; it is effective in soothing Stiles's ruffled ego. Then he says, as though to further appease: “It is said that you know as much as the philosophers and the priests. Perhaps more. It is said you can work mysteries.” He pauses, letting his bright eyes with their chips of dark trace Stiles from tip to toe, considering. “It is said that you are God-touched.”

Stiles draws in a deep breath, and when he lets it out he has decided to speak in relative truths. Nothing about Derek shows itself dishonest to his sight, Derek is simply _more_. 

“These are not lies,” he agrees, cautious. His background is no secret: a youthful prodigy taken into Hermes's temple and raised amidst a court of the finest masters the service of a God could gather. Stiles was meant to be a king, a judge and leader of men, was being groomed to be many things with all of the secrets of the world, but then he had run away. 

When he was seen again, he had grown harder, his softness honed down, and he hunted monsters. Sea-creatures in Argos, sirens at Capreae, bull-men on Crete, sphinxes at Thebes; Stiles went wherever rumor brought wind of a terrible thing plaguing the people and went to put it down. He took with him all he had learned, the teachings of the wise, true magics and false tricks that were often just as good. 

One did not go around announcing oneself as demigod unless one wanted to meet constant confrontation by oafs and fools keen to test their flimsy muscles. Stiles had long ago turned off feeling towards the beasts he tracked, but he was loath to strike men, and he rarely revealed the extent of his lineage. He was reared in Hermes's temple; those who witnessed his displays could believe him favored by the God. Did not need to know he had been born of him. About his mother. 

He shakes his head to clear it, unable to shake off Derek's watchful regard, the sense that Derek can also read more than he lets on. He tries to shift them away from his history. He swallows a few times, and Derek must take his hesitation for need. He reaches for a clay cup of cool water that is set on the ledge over Stiles's head, and then one of Derek's hands is sliding just as cool along the back of his neck, slowly levering him up. Stiles is not so weak but he does not fight the help, drinking deep. He is more tired than he thought, and the water tastes good. It tastes of the forest. 

It is odd and not, sipping like this, with the feeling in the back of his throat like a memory of having done it before. When he thinks that a veil is suddenly shoved aside in him, and Stiles sees half-remembered sights. He understands why his mind had wanted to forget them. 

He sees himself bloody and choking, held up by Derek so that he might breathe. He sees himself wracked with fever, running sweat, Derek using the water from the clay bowl to bathe his fiery brow. He sees himself kicking and thrashing while Derek's locked fingers keep his hands away from the wound all spread over with stingy, itchy, smelly, terrible, awful cleansing poultice. His hands are curled into claws for scratching, only Derek holds them up. He hears Derek saying “Good, that is so good,” from somewhere close, the first time Stiles drinks the whole bowl.

Stiles tries not to splutter, finishes the water somehow, and Derek eases him back. His face must have changed because Derek says, sounding more properly Spartan-gruff, “Enough for now. Rest, and we will talk again.”

Stiles feels heavily weighted but he shakes his head, reaching out to catch Derek's wrist. He could easily be shaken off but Derek allows it. Only his eyebrows tilt up, curious; he does a lot of communicating via eyebrow, Stiles is discovering. 

He lets go. Says, “You say you sought me – for my assistance in some quest, I will assume, yet you accuse me of murder in the same breath. I think I may stay awake to hear the end of it.”

Derek's mouth draws an uncompromising line. “Would you not have slain her? You had aimed a killing blow.”

Her, not _it_. Stiles licks dry lips. “I bring justice. That monster has killed ten men and women in the season I have followed it.” He narrows his eyes, daring Derek to disagree, but he does not, merely shakes his head at Stiles. It is a gesture reminiscent of his old masters, implying that Stiles is very young, that he does not yet understand, and he bristles as always to see it.

Derek says, “She kills, yes, but so do you. She kills with purpose. As do you. She only looks to take the lives of those who have stolen those of others – as do you. She cannot destroy an innocent. Really, you are quite alike.” 

Stiles opens his mouth to protest, eyes wide, but Derek keeps speaking. “The difference,” he says, “is that she was charged by the Gods in her task, cursed, and has no choice in it. Every day she is called to do her duty, and goes to where there is pain and suffering, and she eliminates it.” His calm voice has become heated by the end, and his pale eyes are even brighter. “This is the life you would seek to end.”

Stiles feels his brows knit together. “I --” he begins.

Derek shakes his head. “There is no good answer for it,” he says. “I know. But I _will_ stand in your way again if you go after her. You must trust me that her hide would be a stain on your name.” He folds impossibly large arms across his chest. “Will you swear you will not?”

Stiles lets his eyelids close like lead, keeps them shut a while. When he opens them Derek is keenly watching. Derek's words ring with a truth he cannot deny, as well as warning; Derek will undo all his healing if he has to. 

The making of you, the Oracle had said. How can Stiles give up the command of prophecy? He cannot, but perhaps he can delay it if he must. He is no good for travel, and she – that is, the beast – is no doubt very far away by now. He will wait for a report of its activities coming in on the ships. Even he cannot follow a track over the seas.

“I shall swear not to pursue it until it strikes anew,” Stiles says. “I cannot promise otherwise.” Derek nods at this at the last, and Stiles nods, and since they have reached an accord, says, “Tell me why you found me. It is not in most men to look. I am always amongst monsters.” His smile feels tight as patched-up skin. 

Derek lifts mountainous shoulders in a shrug. “You already said,” he points out. “I require your skills.”

“You hunt a monster?” Stiles is exhausted, tired of quibbling with words.

“Yes,” says Derek.

“Is it really so difficult to find?” he demands.

“Nearly impossible,” promises Derek.

“This monster,” says Stiles. “When we find it, may we kill it?”

“We must,” says Derek.

Stiles shuts his eyes again. It feels good this time. There are no hidden remembrances lurking. He falls into the first dreamless sleep he has had in a long while, but before he drops off entirely, he makes Derek tell him how long it will be until he is ready to start on the trail.

 

* * *

 

Much later Stiles awakens to the movement of Derek settling down beside him. His limbs fold gracefully for their size, and his formidable body becomes a curve that tucks Stiles safely between him and the cavewall. The heat from Derek is stronger than the fire.

He tries to keep still and not show his surprise, but Derek says, like he can see through the dark, “I apologize. An instinct, now. There were times in the nights before, when the dreams Morpheus sent used you cruelly, and it helped if I was close -- and times at night when your fever would soar. I feel uneasy laying my blanket elsewhere.”

“Stay,” murmurs Stiles. His fever has broken its peak but is not finished with him entirely, and there are shivering chills to match the waves of sweating. “Warmer this way,” he says, and Derek keeps his blanket where it is. Both sleep without waking again until Eos comes out in robes of rose-gold, and Helios drives his chariot across the blued sky.


	2. Chapter 2

They pass a triple handful of days sheltering in the cave. Stiles grows stronger. Derek makes thick stews from sliced-up herbs and roots and chunks of fresh meat. In another pot he brews potions from bark and moss, steeping them to make the taste exceptionally foul, Stiles suspects. At night they slumber in parallel lines.

Three times a day Derek doses him with the worst treatments the woods can proffer, and they eat soups and birds' eggs and small speared fish from a stream Derek says runs through the dip of the next hill. Derek hunts following breakfast and gathers berries before sunset at their most ripe. After being gone one day past dark with the terrible potion overcooking over the fire and Stiles starting to wonder, Derek comes back with his arms full of olive branches, their green fruits clinging.

“A rocky outcropping a mile or more away,” he explains, shaking his burden and showering Stiles with olives. Stiles puts up his arms as a shield, grinning. “We can dry these in the sun and have reserves for weeks.” The rest they take turns pressing out in the mortar, grinding the skin and flesh of the fruit down slowly into oil. 

Stiles is standing and moving around and helping with the cooking and the camp by the time of the olives, but after a lavish meal by their standards he lies down, his head on his pillow of stacked animal skins, and Derek tends the bandage. By now he could do it for himself, but every night since Stiles awoke they have moved to this without dialogue. 

Derek fixes him, and Stiles stays still, and does not watch. That night Derek paints the rough stretch of skin over again with the thin oil like pale gold, and Stiles finally stops complaining about the itch. 

Derek opens a jar of wine sealed with wax after that, and mixes some with water, and they drink together with Stiles telling stories and Derek listening with intent, his head canted just so, as had fast become their default way to pass the hours. 

Evenings and late nights after Derek returns from hunting are given over to talking, primarily Stiles talking, while his hands wield a knife with expert precision, flying over the foods Derek's foraged. When Stiles is well enough to take over their fare, he does, cooking elaborate dishes as a spoon and pot and cut roots allow, tired of the interminable stews. Derek seems happy enough to let him have the duty, watches Stiles fuss over preparation with the corners of his mouth and his eyebrows turned up.

They fall into an easy rhythm of it, taking on different chores. Stiles will straighten their side-by-side blankets in the morning while Derek sweeps the cave floor with a broom he fashioned from a branch and bound rushes. Then Derek will fetch water for their morning meal while Stiles slices the smoked meat up into strips and stirs eggs with oil and herbs over the fire. 

They eat off of big leaves with the wooden spoons Stiles whittled during one of his growing bouts of restlessness and Stiles tells tales between bites. In the mornings he has taken to relating legends, filling Derek's ears with the lore of Gods and heroes that he knows. Derek likes epic battle-stories best. Nighttime is when they talk about other kinds of stories, their own. Occasionally Derek can be persuaded to speak about himself at night, with food and wine making him soft.

They argue often on points of law and philosophy and living, coming from very different points of upbringing; but they are congenial about it. The debates, when he can get Derek to debate, are spirited and involved. 

Derek is not at all like matching cool points of logic with his teachers. Derek is war-worn and weary for all that he hardly has more than a handful of years on Stiles, Derek has lived most of the heroic scenarios about soldiers that Stiles's scrolls described. Derek argues from heart and instinct instead of head and reason, but it makes the hours wheel past.

On one topic only will he not be pressed: Derek is tight-lipped about the mission that brought him to Stiles, for all that he anticipates Stiles's aid when he is well. He says it he will speak of it then, but the time is fast approaching. Every day Stiles grows stronger. 

He starts attending Derek on the morning hunts, staying away from direct conflict but wielding the longbow lent to him steadily enough. Soon after they start to spar with fists and then staves cut from sticks, rebuilding his slackened muscles. The drills run longer and longer, until the day when he can run unwinded, chasing Derek through the trees. Derek laughs as they race, a rare sound. 

Then comes the night when Derek peels free his bandage and leaves it off; Stiles's wounds are no longer that, and need only fresh air for healing now. He does his best not to pick at the scabs that form, or to miss Derek's tending. He is nearly himself again the evening Derek comes back flush with news. His controlled gestures are more animated than usual, color high across his cheekbones.

“A stag,” says Derek. “Beautiful. I tracked him for miles before I lost him.” He drops down to start cleaning and repairing his equipment, laying out the extra daggers and arrows. Stiles plays Derek's part, raising his eyebrows at the flurry of activity, but Derek says, “He must be ours. If we cure and salt that much meat, we can travel unimpeded by the need to hunt.”

Stiles concedes the point. “We will go with the dawn,” he says. “I shoot better than you do.”

Derek inclines his head in acknowledgment but then he shakes it. “You must stay. You are doing very well,” he says, sliding into conciliatory, the tone he had discovered worked best to soothe Stiles. “But the truth is that I can move faster without you. And it must be tonight; his trail is fresh now, but the clouds threaten rain. I will go alone,” says Derek, “and will return with the prize.”

There is an edge to Derek that has led Stiles to think more and more that he is loved by the war-God. Sometimes a hungry gleam fills his eye that makes him pace about the cave, or spend hours scouring the wooded hills. He is always prepared for an ambush and even more ready for a fight, and Stiles suspects Derek is never so content as when his pulse and bloodlust are up. 

He has read of men like this, who can lose themselves in the exquisite slaughter of battle as though it is their art, their music. Watching Derek tie up his gauntlets, and slide on his knives, then bend to sharpen the tip of the spear that works like an extension of his hand, Stiles knows he is watching a master at work. 

He cannot deny that he is still a hindrance in a wild night-chase. “How long will you be gone?” he says instead. Strange that it should feel so strange to have Derek going; Stiles has been alone these last years and never knew a companion until his injury. But he has grown used to the company, the split tasks, even Derek's stew, grown used to the way Derek lets him talk and talk and talk until Derek finally interrupts with his opinion. The odd feeling of Derek leaving boils low in his belly, hidden under skin scraped by scarring claw-marks. 

“A night or two, no more,” says Derek. He finishes resharpening edges and repacking supplies and turns to see Stiles twisting a rag between his hands. Derek stands up, the mere act of it lessening the space between them, and then he closes the distance. “Stiles. You need not worry. The full moon is coming, and there will be plenty of light. It promises to be a glorious pursuit.” Stiles shows no reaction, tries not to, so Derek says, temptingly, “And soon we will be on another sort of hunt, no? You are nearly ready.”

“I _am_ ready,” says Stiles, with a jut of his chin. Derek is standing close, and his hand comes up to curl around Stiles's upper arm. He pulls him closer, drawing Stiles beneath his chin only long enough that their bodies align before stepping back. It is a movement quick as Derek's usual whirlwind, and as sure.

“Look for me within two days' time,” Derek says again, as though he knows Stiles needs to hear it spelled out. He slings the satchel over his shoulder. Stiles trails him nearly out of the cave. Unsure. Something feels wrong; he should not let Derek leave, but Derek is leaving all the same. 

“Take your potions,” says Derek, and he heads back into the night while gray clouds roll over the thickening moon. 

 

* * *

 

That night it rains as Derek promised. Stiles can hear it crashing down outside the cave, and the deluge is such that the walls turn damp and drip. He is not asleep when the storm starts but he stays awake to try to hear it stop. Alone on the cold ground he twists and turns and cannot get comfortable. The extra heat from Derek's body is missing and Stiles shivers for the first time since his fever faded. 

He lies on his back and then his side, and when that is to no effect he does strengthening exercises until his breath comes out panting between his teeth and his muscles scream. Still sleep will not come. He tries not to think about Derek trying to shelter in the trees against a storm that has no end. He fails.

When he dreams at last he dreams of Derek. These are different from fever-dreams, though nearly as feverish. In the dreams Derek is on him, moving over him, pinning Stiles down with his weight. Derek is very close. Derek's teeth are at his neck, and his hand on Stiles's belly is slick with oil.

Stiles awakens breathing hard to more rain. He climbs up to the low entrance and ducks out. The rain is thick and drenching and the sky is laced with clouds, but Derek was right about the moon. It hangs huge and round and orange, brightening the hills and further mountains. Wherever he is, Derek will be illuminated. 

Stiles sets out the animal skins they have rigged to catch drinking water and sits by the lip of the cave, watching the woods absorb the wash and rush of rain. Lightening crackles and flashes and the thunder, when it comes, is deafening, as though his grandfather Zeus is in a fit overhead. The moon seems to swell with the storm. Far away in the treeline, a wolf howls.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles casts mountain ash for the first time since he awoke in the cave instead of Hades. This had long been a ritual for him, a soothing and protective one, but it felt like an odd thing to show Derek despite the friendship they had struck. Perhaps one day he would let Derek see; but in his experience men responded to the sight of magic with fear or greed, and Stiles has time for neither. 

He puts off sleep and dreams to ground himself in earth. The small stitched bag of ash fits his palm well. He only needs a pinch, pressing it firmly between thumb and forefinger. He walks a slow circle around the fire and his lone blanket. 

When the ash seems to run out it does not. There is always more in his hand. He closes the circle, murmuring well-known incantations, binding himself safely in. No monster may cross his line now without consequence. 

The ash does not keep out dreams.

 

* * *

 

The first day with Derek gone crawls. Stiles languishes on his bedroll. He carves more spoons. He catches fish in the stream over the hill. He mends armor with a big needle. He wonders how he had hunted for so long alone. He seems to have forgotten how. He drinks foul potions because Derek reminded him. He casts a circle of dark ash. He sleeps poorly when he does at all.

 

* * *

 

The second day without Derek feels like being locked in a cell for future torture. Stiles paces. He twitches. His hands cannot focus long enough to finish whittling the rough figurines he starts. 

He has come to regret not insisting that he go with Derek. He is the son of a God, no longer the peace-minded scholar who had never lifted a sword in anger. _He_ is the hunter, Derek had come to him. He is Greece's most expert and ruthless tracker, left back like a babe in arms who must be protected. The second day, Stiles seethes. 

By evening with no sign of Derek, and the return of angry rainfall promising to slow his steps even if he is making his way back, Stiles becomes a flurry of focused motion. He packs and cleans the camp. He wraps up the olives they have dried, the reserves of meat and the bunches of herbs, readying it all for travel. There is no burn in his side as he goes about the tasks. Stiles is ready. He needs Derek, and to be gone from here, or he will surely go mad.

 

* * *

 

The third day dawns like the true onset of madness. His skin feels tight, as though it can no longer keep him in. His mind flings itself along varied pathways. All through the night Derek has been with him in dreams, so that he half-expects to open his eyes on Derek beside him, but he is still alone. 

Two days, Derek had said _two_ at most, and now Stiles will go to find him. He should have left the night before. 

But when he is up and decided, a pack of provisions ready to be slung over his back, when he is tying on his sword-belt for the first time since the day he fell, a shadow crosses the mouth of the cave, and Stiles's heart leaps beating into his throat. 

Then Derek is there, filling up all the space and taking up the light, the heady musk of his scent hitting Stiles as hard as the sight of him does.

The tunic that he wears is scratched and torn through in a dozen places by thorns and tree-limbs and what look to be claws. There are leaves in his hair and caught twigs, so that he appears half a satyr, wild from the woods. Mud streaks over his powerful calves and his feet track red clay. Redder still is the blood that seeps down his arms and darkens the tunic's hem. The blood comes from the enormous stag slung across his shoulders, throat ripped out and gaping crimson. Derek wears its weight as though it were the Golden Fleece.

His gaze snaps to Stiles, and his eyes have the flash of wine-dark bloodlust that Stiles has come to know. But Stiles is glad enough to see him that he forgets about his sword, lets it slip with a silent apology to Hephaestus. As he moves towards Derek, Derek unslings the animal and sets it down with a grunt.

“Did you doubt my return?” Derek demands, moving too, so that they draw a straight line toward the other. He indicates Stiles's preparations with a twist of his hand. He is almost close enough to touch, Derek painted in red and green and brown and gold. 

“No,” says Stiles, honest. “I only meant to hasten it.”

He pulls up short just before Derek but Derek does not stop; they collide with an impact that throws Stiles forward, and he follows it and presses himself against Derek. Derek's hand comes up and fists into his hair, tight enough to ache, and he pulls back to bare Stiles's throat and drop his mouth there. His mouth is hot and wet and full of sharp teeth that scrape.

“I could not rest,” Derek tells his neck. One huge arm locks around Stiles like iron. “I could not rest at all, knowing you here without my guard. The moon brought out all the wild things.”

“I can--” Stiles begins, trying not to sound indignant, because Derek has his arm around him.

“I know how bravely you would have fought,” Derek amends. “Still I did not want to imagine it, but my mind showed me little else.” Stiles flushes, since his own mind has been a good deal more creatively far-ranging. 

“Had you come to harm again--” Derek does not finish the thought, only clenches his grip in Stiles's hair, as though to be assured of its solidity, and his lips to the soft skin behind Stiles's ear move without sound but seem to speak great volumes. Derek smells of sweat and blood and storms.

Stiles yields, as they both knew he would. He does not cry out when Derek marks his collarbone with the fierce pressure of his mouth. He is a God's son, he does not cry out; he wraps his arms around the span of Derek's chest and fixes there, and he tips his head to let Derek have more of him. Derek is feasting, like a man half-starved. 

He begins to turn when Derek's arousal becomes pressing, but Derek halts him, cups a hand under Stiles's chin and tilts his face up. 

“Tell me you have been had,” he says. The words are rough, inelegant, urgent, like he needs Stiles to say yes and no all at once. His fingers pull at the weave of Stiles's tunic, warping the bronze pin that binds it at the shoulder; then Stiles is before him naked and unshivering. His heart is beating fast and skips when Derek reaches to take the proud evidence of Stiles's own arousal firmly in hand.

“Of course,” says Stiles. His father is the God of deceit. He lies well. What does it matter either way? He can give himself to Derek as easily as to any man, but Derek has a look in his eyes like he might not if Stiles admits that he has not been loved before. 

“Derek,” he breathes instead, encouragingly, pitched to further distraction. “Derek,” and “Derek,” until Derek grabs him about the waist and drags him down. 

The weight of him drapes over Stiles like it had in dreams. He sets his teeth against the arc of bone where Stiles's spine rises into neck. Edges lips into his hair, breathes sharply there. His fingers splay on Stiles's lower back. When Derek speaks it is with clipped words, great restraint. 

“Why did you lie?” he asks. His tone dips low. They are bent very low to the ground, Stiles with stone against his knees, his hands closing on rocks and dust. 

He lifts his head and looks back. Derek seems more heat and color and muscle than man. “To suit you,” he says. “What would you have of me?”

“Stiles,” says Derek, “that is a question with many answers.” Yet even so Derek rocks against him, his body seeking out the oldest rhythm, his hold on Stiles tightening. Only his voice is hesitant. “In Sparta rule and law govern us in this.”

Stiles pushes back, insistent. “I am no Spartan.”

“No.” Derek's hand refinds him, strokes him. “No, you are something else.” 

His words climb up Stiles's spine from the base, and Derek's hand is big and sure and keeps stroking, so that Stiles hisses out breath between his teeth, straining in his fist. No hand save his own has ever touched him like this, and the difference is shockingly acute. 

He makes a startled, desperate noise that seems to decide Derek. Derek is flung heavily over him, Derek's heavy covering limbs, Derek grounding him to earth. Then Derek is pushing himself, long and hard and sweat-slick between Stiles's thighs, which he brings in together; it is not the same as being broached, but contains the promise of it. 

Once so caught, Derek makes friction, the drag and slide of his thrust urgent, the speed and snap of his hips increasing. He sets teeth at the tender flesh of Stiles's earlobe and moves against him, running with sweat and stag's blood, the stubble of his cheek leaving a burning path on Stiles's skin. He drives them toward a rhythm that Stiles catches, matches, murmurs at, and they move together as one, their mingled shadow on the cave wall.

When Derek pairs the tug of his hand to the push and pull of his hips Stiles is already lost, panting harshly as he is undone, heart beating faster than when they ran through the trees. He is a God's son, but even God's sons cry out. 

Derek palms the thick, hot fluid across his stomach appreciatively, then slides his hand down Stiles's flank, using his strength to further press his legs together. Between his thighs Derek is flush with blood and grown even harder, the length of him enormous, and Stiles aches to think how he might take him. Derek feels able to split him apart, but Stiles has studied the workings of bodies and the appetites of men, and knows that Derek will fit. 

He shivers, thinking it, and his skin pebbles with gooseflesh; the muscles of his thighs flutter and clench; Derek's fingers reclaim his hair, and then Derek is riding him to an explosive close. His throat makes a sound halfway between growl and groan, and his teeth seek and find a soft spot on Stiles's shoulder and sink there. 

He bites only just hard enough to hurt, and Stiles jerks beneath him, pliant, made wet with Derek's release. He focuses on holding himself up, fighting the bizarre, brilliant image of turning over and asking Derek to paint his belly with their lust, like Derek was tending his bandage.

Derek's weight slips loose and drops to the side, and Stiles gets his limbs working, folds up to sit next to him. He is still breathing quickly, his pulse a chaotic thrum behind his ear that increases when Derek reaches out, his fingers curling Stiles's wrist like a bracelet.

“We are a sight,” says Derek. “Will you come with me to the stream?”

 _I will follow you to Hades,_ Stiles thinks, and even though he is in the afterglow of a glorious triumph, the thought is born unbidden, frightening in its depth. How can he be so willing to tie himself to a man whose true nature he does not know? Yet Derek knew as little of the full truths about him. They had shared their base ideas and experiences, kept the things that had truly honed and shaped them secret. 

But so did most men and women. Derek had also cared for him through miserable days and worse nights, and ate the meals Stiles cooked with relish, and listened while he talked, and argued with flushed cheeks, and hunted with him in the woods in perfect concert. Derek had shown himself to be terrifically brave and thoughtful as a hermit and lusty as Eros. Derek needed him to find and kill a monster. Derek had left a long line of bruises along his neck that were darkening to purple. 

Stiles nods. “I will follow you,” he says instead, saying only part of it, and they go outside together naked as the day they were birthed. 

He gets a head start in running, and gets down the hill first, where Derek tackles him with the ease of a practiced wrestler. They roll into the mud and muck until Derek comes out above him. He bends and kisses Stiles sweet and slow, so that the first taste of Derek is also of the woods, as he had long thought Derek would taste.

 

* * *

 

At the stream Derek dams up one end with rocks and twigs and leaves to form a shallow pool. They dip and splash cool water onto their bodies and over each other. They make a contest of splashing. When the last of the blood and the dirt runs clean they haul themselves to the grassy bank and lie side by side with the sun high overhead. 

Stiles stretches, warming to his toes, and Derek turns into him, goes up on an elbow, tilts his head to follow a trickle of water across the slope of Stiles's shoulder with his tongue. 

He squirms at the tickle of it, but Derek does not stop, keeps licking, keeps finding new sensitive places that respond to his licks, until he is slid much further and is concentrating on the light trail of hair that leads down from Stiles's navel. 

Stiles wriggles, this time more happily, but there is too much that needs knowing before they can lose themselves to sport again. He lets his fingers draw circles in the short-cut length of Derek's hair while Derek licks on, undeterred when he starts talking. “A time as good for any for questions,” Stiles says, “and answers.” There goes Derek's eyebrow, which means at least that he is listening. 

Stiles says, “What happened to the stag?”

Derek has been laving lower and lower, while Stiles demonstrates his resilience with fast-emerging interest, but he pauses now. He looks up. “I followed him a great distance,” he says. “The trail was rough going in the storm. I was nearly on him last night, but thunder interrupted us, and he fled. This morning I resolved to come back to you,” he says, eyebrow climbing, “lest you come looking for me. As I retraced my steps, I found him fallen on the path. Some beast had savaged him.”

Now Stiles's brows go up, and not just because Derek resumes licking between words. Derek is delicate by the scarring-over skin of his belly. He can sense that there is more to the story that Derek will not say. “A considerate beast,” says Stiles, hearing his own bitterness, “to take its throat and not the finer parts.” 

Derek shakes his head. “It was not she,” he says. “I scented it for poison. The meat is clean. The kill was.” He shrugs, looking unconcerned; his forehead smooths. “She is far away now, Stiles. Think on other matters. What is your next question?”

Stiles arcs against an onslaught from Derek's questing tongue. He struggles to gather and thread coherent thoughts. “Tell me of Spartan customs.”

He is surprised by Derek's small smile. “What have you read?”

“Some,” Stiles admits. “Scrolls, and rumors. Your women are warlike, some dress as men do; and children are reared for war. Sorted early in life by ability. Male citizens are trained in battle for half their lives. The men of your army are – are urged to take a partner from the ranks. It is believed to make for fiercer warriors.”

“Yes,” says Derek. “It is true that our love is our strength.”

Stiles lets out a slow breath. “But you would not take me.” 

It hurts to say it, but it is all that is unspoken between them. He is not keen on the unspoken. All the other parts of them slide well together, save this. He had been willing, and Derek wanting, but Derek had stopped before the start.

Derek stops again. Flows back up over Stiles, fluid as water. “In Sparta,” says Derek, “we have a sense of ceremony about it.” He noses to Stiles's cheek, then down and up his neck, nipping, and speaking, and explaining. “We forge partnerships. We make partners; we do not seize them. It is this that I would have of you.” 

For once, Derek is the first to break their shared gaze, looking away, to the slope where the cave sits. “You asked. Before.”

For once, Stiles lacks words. The strain of Derek's bicep is very near Stiles's head, and he turns and sets his lips there. It takes him a long while. Finally he says, “What must I do to prove myself?”

“That is already done,” says Derek. “Are we not decided?” 

The way his body pins Stiles perfectly does not broker the question. Derek says, “No, it is on me. In our traditions, the more experienced must introduce the mysteries with care. The responsibility is mine.”

“You will take it most seriously,” says Stiles, seriously. If he had not been raised in a temple he might find Derek's adherence to dogma more off-putting, but there was no denying the wisdom of the practice. An army comprised of bonded lovers certainly had more to fight for, and the Spartans' prowess was unmatched. Stiles is not a patient man by nature, but Derek abides by military rules and efficiency, follows orders, for all his seeming independence. These at least are orders Stiles does not object to.

When Derek shifts back lower, his mouth open and warm, his scratchy-soft cheek to the skin of his thigh, Stiles only has one more question. 

He whispers it. “What are you?”

Derek does not look up. He is focusing his tongue along the vee of Stiles's hipbone. He raises his head and halts the task only long enough to speak. “I thought you knew,” says Derek, sounding surprised. “I knew when first I saw you. But I have more years than you, and have met others before.” The press of his lips moves toward the center. “I am a half a God, the same as you are.”

Stiles's heart thuds to life, from Derek's touch and Derek's words. It takes a moment to realize that Derek is still speaking. “You know much of the wisdom of sages, son of Hermes. But I have a different set of lessons for you to learn.” Derek takes him into his mouth, swallows him deep. Starts to teach him. 

_I know nothing_ thinks Stiles, once a hope of man's intellect, and then, blissfully, he stops thinking.

 

* * *

 

Later they put down their blankets overlapping. They recline covered halfway by Derek's tunic. The light from the fire casts shadows on the wall. It is their last night in the cave. Stiles curls up on his side, facing the neat line of supplies awaiting the morning. Derek seals himself around Stiles. Surrounds him. One big arm is thrown across his hip, and his knees tuck in against Stiles's knees. They fit. 

If they dream neither remember.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day they divide up their burdens and set out to leave the forest behind them. It is a good day for the hike, fresh and brisk, with the wind up and the sun not too hot, and they make good time. They reverse the direction Stiles had taken to get there, heading for the sea. They race each other only sometimes, conserving energy.

Stiles excels at path-breaking and takes point, impressing Derek with his ability, carving them a sneaky way through the trees, hiding any evidence that they have passed through. It is worth it for the way Derek watches him with bright eyes, and how Derek takes to pressing him against foliage and down against big rocks and having him there. Stiles is glad to be traveling again, but he exits the wood that sheltered them with a pang of regret.

As they go by Derek's instructions and Stiles's pathways to the water, Stiles has more questions that Derek must relent to. He is well at last and needs to know what they hunt. 

“I am sworn to end all cursed creatures,” he says to Derek. “I have encountered the most wretched abominations the Gods' wrath have wrought. I will not shrink from your prey.”

Nearby Derek shakes his head. His hair is growing out longer, catches the wind. “I do not doubt your bravery, Stiles. I count upon it. The one I seek is not easily caught. It does not think like an animal any more than I do. It is not a man made into beast by Gods; it is a beast who can make himself seem a man.” 

There is silence in the slight space between them. They walk very close. Stiles has cut a long stick that he pokes and prods ahead with, checking that the ground will be whole beneath their feet. He tugs on his lower lip with his teeth and tries to turn his face into a mask. “Perhaps you should start at the beginning,” he says. 

Derek sighs as though story-telling is a great hardship, but he grumbles into speech. “You have read the lore of Lycaon?”

“Of Arcadia,” Stiles supplies at once. “Yes, but tell me anyway. There are many versions, and I like to hear new sources.”

They plod along as Derek considers. “The bards say that he was foolish and cruel and denied the Gods. Zeus decided to test him, and visited his kingdom. Lycaon recognized the King of the Gods and sought to test him in return. He killed one of his own fifty sons, and served the child to Zeus at dinner.” Derek recites the grisly tale steadily, slowly unfurling the memory of its telling. “Zeus saw through his blasphemous deception, and as Lycaon ran from his fury, he was turned into a wolf.”

Stiles nods and starts to interject with variants on the tradition, but Derek is saying, “All of his sons, who already had the hearts of beasts, were turned into wolves.”

“Hmn,” hums Stiles. “In my scrolls Zeus struck down the king's sons.”

“No,” says Derek. “Zeus is wise. He deemed it a greater punishment to live so accursed. To pass on the curse to their children and make a family of monsters that would birth more, and more. To have Lycaon's name tied forever to fear and death and monstrous hubris.” He coughs to clear his throat. “The scrolls also do not say another thing. They do not say that the God of earth and sky failed in his punishment. Lycaon delighted in his new-found form, its savage power. Finally he resembled outwardly the beast that he was. He taught his family how to harness what they had become, how to put off their wolf-skins and appear as men.”

It is the most Derek has ever said to him in a single conversation, and Stiles cants his head, fascinated. The details of the legend are new to him. He has studied all the materials on Gods and monsters that can be found, but some parts of stories are never written. There are other tales like Lycaon's, men and women who defied or spurned or challenged Gods; Stiles has met and dealt with the results of many; but few told of creatures so stricken who are able to regain their old shape. 

He wants to press queries, but Derek is being loose-tongued enough on his own that he holds back. “This is what we seek,” he says, gaze scanning from treeline to undergrowth and back. “A descendent of Lycaon's line.” Derek's mouth is thin. “He disappears more readily than your other creatures.”

“But he cannot vanish,” says Stiles. “He is not a God; like any, then, he leaves behind a trace, and we will use that to track and find him.”

Derek's expression holds a rush of mingled gratitude and surprise. “You have hunted such before?”

“No,” Stiles admits. “Not as such. But it is not unspoken of. And I _have_ killed man-beasts,” he says, lifting his chin. “I know the ways in which they are weak.” He narrows his eyes, poking the ground with his stick. “Tell me why this one afflicts you, that I might hate it more.”

They have been coming to this a long while. Derek draws a breath, lets it out. He slows his feet, halts them mid-wood. They are in a good-size clearing, with boughs bent overhead to keep off the sun and storms. Wordlessly, he unburdens himself of baggage while Stiles follows suit; going about the varied tasks they have performed so many times before, they break camp for the night. Stiles lays out the blankets and starts to make a circle of stones for the firepit, while Derek collects dry branches for kindling. As they move, Derek tells him more of his story.

“He...it...” Derek seems to struggle with Stiles's vernacular. Stiles ducks his head, chopping greens and olives by their quick-started fire, and is the one to listen, for once.

“No, the beginning,” says Derek, as though to himself. Then, “In Sparta, a woman may hold the same office as any man, provided she is strong enough.” 

Stiles has read of these revolutionary ideas, but they are strange to him. He does not deny it, but instead thinks of his mother, how she might have done with an army. 

He smiles a little, which Derek does not catch because he is hacking apart slices of thick stag meat with his hatchet. Fresh blood runs in rivulets down into the grass. He says, “My sister was strong. She was an able warrior, and her intellect rivaled yours.” The stag is getting re-savaged. “She was meant to lead our family. She did, for many years. I was to be in the army, one day a general. All was settled.”

Stiles realizes he is hearing far more than the tale of a monster, but he tries not to alter his movements, tries not to let Derek know how keenly he is listening. Derek is making a pulp of their dinner. It will have to be stew after all.

“The...creature we track. He pretended at love for her. For us all,” Derek says, watching the blood. “Then it showed its true face, and betrayed her. My sister is dead, Stiles.” His shoulders hunch, incongruous to their huge size. Stiles stops chopping. Gets up and over and into the crook of Derek's arm. Derek holds still.

“You might have told me earlier,” says Stiles, pushing Derek's dark hair back. “I would have healed the faster.” Derek seizes onto him, his eyes closing, blindly grasping; his sigh is exhaled against Stiles's throat.

“I have looked for too long,” Derek says. “Many years looking until I heard tell of the little scholar who could hunt down any challenge brought to him.”

Against him, Stiles swells. “I am at your service.”

“And I,” says Derek, “at yours.” He turns grasping into loving, while the stew smokes and burns in its pot over the fire they built.

 

* * *

 

Derek loves him with lips and teeth and tongue, with mobile mouth and wicked fingers. He delights in laying Stiles out and stripping him raw. Derek makes him bare. Derek climbs up over him, fitting him, and he pulls Stiles's wrists above his head to be held still with one hand. Derek looks at him with eyes of an unfathomable shade and says, “Like this, Stiles,” and “Like this, Stiles?” Derek makes a meal of him that far surpasses any feast. Derek makes him moan, makes him groan, makes his voice an unrecognizable pleading thing. Derek is hard and rough with him, leaving bites and scratches and impressions that take days to fade. Derek is soft and kind, kissing his mouth for hours, letting his fingers map the patterns of Stiles's skin, leaving fingers in his hair, drawing out small sighs until they are full-bodied. Derek glimmers above him in the light. Derek loves him.

 

* * * 

 

They yawn all tossed together, at haphazard angles; a leg here, an elbow there. Most of Stiles is sprawled across Derek. Derek's broad chest takes his weight easily enough, and Derek's arm is curved around him. The night sky showing through the boughs overhead is a change from their cave but they like how open it is after so long spent shut in. Derek traces out constellations on his back with a fingertip while Stiles tells the stories of how they got there. They fall asleep like that, with Derek sketching stars, and Stiles murmuring, “And then--''


End file.
